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Is This Alexithymia

Aaron
Once upon a time in the 1980s I was in the bath listening to Samuel Barber’s “Adagio For Strings”.  Then I heard my girlfriend come home. She walked in the bathroom and said uurgh! music to die to! I was surprised as I thought it was happy music. On the odd occasion over the years I have though to myself why is it say sad music. I have often wondered about such stuff. It does seem to be true that I find it hard to collect words for some things in the way that a literary person or someone describing music would.
It has taken a couple of decades but recently I thought about what would a happy piece of music be. I thought about Shiny Happy People by REM and watched the YouTube video. I love the song. It involves people smiling while dancing up and down. Ahh! I can see/hear a difference. This is happy because they are moving up and down at a particular speed and smiling. I can see this visually. But then it is their speed of movement which is a spatial distance and speed from the floor which is with the meaning.  That can’t be the only criteria of happiness though surely. Upwards is from somewhere and in this case it is the floor.  However I see the Adagio as uplifting in which there is the concept of upwards which must be up from somewhere. Up has to be co-dependant on a frame  of reference. Spatially could this be a floor therefore length.
The Adagio has beauty therefore a nice feeling so what is wrong with saying it is happy. Recently I read however that it is regarded as mournful and played at funerals.  I have been into Buddhism however and there is a notion that things share properties with other things. So maybe it is not so clear cut. But hang on it would be daft to say they are the same wouldn’t it.
Ok I am beginning to understand something and if you guys want to have a laugh at this then have a laugh on me! I sometimes laugh. It is just finding words for emotions and needing something visual to recognise a difference. Yes I think/feel visually and synaesthetically.  An emotion in me will be seen as a picture with colour but not necessarily figurative (an object or person). An emotion can be a splash of two colours with a gradient between them. Any spot on the continuum between them is a part of change of emotion. Sometimes one of the colours can represent the future and the emotion that it is.
As well I still believe it is not so simple. Words are hardly ever completely spot on the mark in identifying properties and qualities of feeling states. To me all emotions are images but even symbols are not exact and the taxonomy of words seeks to reduce emotions. Images in my mind/body can be abstract and they are not completely accurate. Also how can science reduce an emotion to a square if it is an image. Could all this let me off the hook or, well people would have a point in correcting me. Well maybe I finally am learning it is not happy music but music to die to sigh!
I would like to ask though pleasey weasy!
Can anyone relate to this? Is this Alexithymia? does it seem Autistic?
  • in reply to Aaron

    Sorry I see your profile says music and tech. Don’t know why I thought you teach it.  Great stuff all the same.

  • in reply to JuniperFromGallifrey

    Hi You talk about the convergence of  stuff. Yes I agree that is one of the reasons I am now interested in a project by Birmingham University. It is a multidisciplinary approach to psychiatry and includes; philosophers, historians, theologians, psychologists and psychiatrists. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/mental-health/index.aspx

    As well therapy can be very broad. In the 80s I spent a year as a patient in what was regarded as the worlds first experimental psychiatric unit. It was a therapy clinic. When I left I had questions. The clinic stuff was Freudian. However I became involved in the Humanistic Therapy Association and it was a different world. Researching therapy revealed so many different approaches and history of ideas from hugging to science.

    I see from your profile that you like philosophy. That is my favourite subject. As well there is the philosophy of therapy which converges again.  

    is it right you teach music. Well that is another thing I have questions about as I wonder if it is possible to have a specific learning difficulty with music. I have practiced for decades. But am a crap musician but can be technical.  Even tuning evades me. However I once did a dissertation on the Collaboration of Kandinski and Schoenberg which I got a distinction for. Yet again I needed the visual (Kandinski) to help me understand the music. As well years ago I was diagnosed as wooden. Well it is visual examples of expression on music scores and imagery that helped me to understand expression. I now am more expressive. 

    Forgive me I can go on and on!!

    What’s it all about folks sigh!

    love to you all 

  • in reply to JuniperFromGallifrey

    Hi thanks for the reply. I like what you are saying and want to read it a couple of times and think about it before I reply to you and will do soon.

  • in reply to Aaron

    I think we all run up against a majority - uneducated. Alexithymia is romantic night out topic for 2 neurosurgeons. It might be game show fodder, but only once. 

    Same with Autism. Which is confused for Downs syndrome across the States by the average individual. This is what we're up against and why matters of expression... matter.

    Amazing you grew up near Caitlin! She's wicked funny. Jounalists spend so much time in research, they might appear more clever than most due to that. Psychology, at this stage is influenced and spilling into the psychoanalytical, philosophy, sociology, neurology... These all converge at points. For every action, causality, transaction, movement, there is a system. It may not be easy to ID or spell out, but it exists. It is an element for those who cannot help but dive into critical analysis: Abyss! Yes! WHAT is in there??? I'm jumping off this ledge now! LOL

    But art is also a fundamental expression of that which we cannot quite express. I would love to see your paintings.

    And if you're aware of a limit - you can envision the horizon of where your knowledge at this point in time is a blob to be shaped, that's really quite hopeful. :) 

  • in reply to JuniperFromGallifrey

    Hi thanks for the reply. I have done some painting in art classes. The meanings that they produce and evoke in people can be a diverse education. Abstract art shows how just form can be feeling based but beyond simple words. 

    I can relate to you talking about Opinion Columns and commentary I have been looking at some and learning stuff. Kitty Empire in the Observer comments on music and to me she is amazing with language in a certain way.  I have a mixed higher education but it is as if she has an intelligence I don’t have.  I have been writing down her phrases.  As well I once did a few years counselling training. However I have been reading Mariella Frostrup’s agony aunt page and there is no way I have her articulation as to human relations. I can do some reflective empathy stuff. I had to give up counselling at a professional level mostly because of attention problems but now I am considering other reasons.

    Yes Caitlin Moran has an amazing talent and I have recently been looking at her stuff and amazed and thinking how does she put life into words.

    Just  to let you know Caitlin Moran grew up a mile from where I live. 

    As well part of me is wondering if the subject of Alexithymia can be broadened then as in the case of the stereotype of Autistic people having no empathy which gets challenged quite a lot. That is if emotionality is so broad in such a way that such a lot of it is beyond words then the simple assumption of no words therefore no emotions can be reconsidered as it can have negative connotations.

  • Aaron said:
    The Adagio has beauty therefore a nice feeling

    This is a beautiful and moving piece of music.  I'm listening to it and enjoying being moved.  It's a nice feeling for me too.

  • in reply to GuybrushThreepwood

    Hi Thanks for the reply. You say to you the piece is not sad and a deceased person can enjoy listening to it. Maybe it purpose is to lift us from sadness therefore it has to be partly close to it then. 

    “it does sound like you have synesthesia linked to your emotions so I’m not sure if that is separate to alexithymia or could be a combination?”

    That is what I am trying to find out. As I understand it Alexithymia is Greek for no words for emotions. However I experience all kinds of shades of difference in imagery so does it mean it is harder to combine the two. If so could it mean there is another explanation. That is people who are seen as having Alexithymia can be very emotional and diverse with emotions but finding words for them is more difficult.

    Can relate when you say that you recognise anger, sad or happiness but anything in between you have to ponder on it.

  • I wonder - could you create paintings of how you see these emotions? 

    Aaron said:
    a splash of two colours with a gradient between them. Any spot on the continuum between them is a part of change of emotion. Sometimes one of the colours can represent the future and the emotion that it is.

    I love a whole art showing with massive canvases exposing how another envisions the world. 

    Words and Identifications can be difficult when sorting through overwhelming images in ones imagination. Or when the mind suddenly goes blank (which I think is a form of alexithymia). For me it took years to become more articulate. Commenatary and Opinion columns help, especially individuals who are brilliant with their construction - Orwells old essays, for instance. Caitlin Moran's books and columns. One can become a 'word-smith' of sorts, just as anything can be learned. But I'm afraid I might never be quick with it.

  • Aaron said:
    Once upon a time in the 1980s I was in the bath listening to Samuel Barber’s “Adagio For Strings”.  Then I heard my girlfriend come home. She walked in the bathroom and said uurgh! music to die to! I was surprised as I thought it was happy music.

    I think this piece tends to be used in films are very tragic moments so people associate it with that and people play it at funerals because the deceased person enjoyed listening to it. I don’t think it’s a sad piece if I just listen with a clear mind though. I can have the opposite with one of Beethoven’s pieces I think Symphony 7 in A, I saw it advertised on a Classic fm most relaxing songs album but it can make me feel a bit agitated as I find it sounds quite intense. Happy music to me quite upbeat and in a major key, usually without intense dynamics. I think maybe the way people process music can be quite subjective maybe it could be dependent on neurotype, would be interesting to see if there are any studies.
    Alexithymia by definition is an inability to recognise or express an emotion for example having butterflies in your stomach and thinking you’re ill when you’re actually nervous, it does sound like you have synesthesia linked to your emotions so I’m not sure if that is separate to alexithymia or could be a combination? I don’t have synesthesia so I can’t really relate. I possibly have alexithymia, I can recognise very strong emotions (mainly anger,happiness, sadness) but anything in between is neutral or I need to ponder on it for a few days at least to work out why I’m behaving a certain way (I think at those times after a lot of thinking about it at various points of the last year I ‘m usually stressed but not at exploding point)